The Informatics Group will provide computer services, communications, and data security for other Projects in the Center. These services include the rudimentary tasks of supplying computers and operating system software, network operations, system backup and retrieval facilities, and the development intensive tasks of supplying database applications and specialized data analysis applications. With the proposed increaased scope of the Center, the activities of the Informatics group will need to expand accordingly. To provide for the new online data storage requirements of the Center, we will purchase and install hardware to increase our online storage capacity by an order of magnitude, and provide a means of permanent storage for this data. Our heterogeneous client-server database application will be expanded to accommodate the new projects, and allow retrieval of raw data. We will continue to supply customized data analysis and data presentation applications for the specialized needs of the Center, including RH mapping, cosmid contig assembly and human genomic DNA sequencing. Further, to incorporate new capabilities of molecular and genetic analyses across different types of databases, ewe will begin engineering specific enhancements to the Genome Topographer in conjunction with Dr. Tom Marr's group at the Cold Sprint Harbor Laboratory. One of the first new developments will be the development of an automated consistency checking tool, which takes related map elements (genetic, physical, sequence) and automatically checks for consistent order and distance relations. To disseminate the Center's findings, we will further enhance the means of accessing our publicly-available data by including a WorldWideWeb server, and a gopher server.